Holiday Decorating with Air Plants & Succulents

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others.”
– Bob Hope

While many of us have been excitedly waiting for Christmas for months now, the arrival December means that the holiday season is in full swing. Many of our homes and halls are decked with all our favorite traditional holiday styles, but we also want to bring in a hint of something new and stylish to our homes.

Succulents and air plants have undoubtedly been one of this year’s biggest trends in home gardening decor, and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be the stars of this year’s holiday decorations either. There are so many fun and unique ways to style your home with these gorgeous plants that there’s something that is fit for anyone’s tastes, color palette, or theme.

Succulent and Air Plant Decorating

Succulents and air plants have captured our imagination all year, and we’ve seen dozens of trendy and gorgeous designs take root. These plants are fashionable not only for their unique look – stunning shapes in all shades of jewel tones and silvers – but also for their ease of care. They’re the perfect choice for unique decoration projects.

Succulent Wreaths

This gravity-defying project is a great way to get the most of combining traditional decorations and new trends. Sculpt a Christmas wreath out of fashionable succulents for a totally new take on the evergreen trend. Here’s how to get this look at home:

You’ll need:

• A sphagnum wreath form of your choice of size OR a wire wreath form
• Loose sphagnum moss
• Twine or wire to wrap the wreath and hold the moss

• Small succulents (2” or less) or succulent cuttings
• Dowel or chopsticks
• Greening pins

How to Make A Succulent Wreath:

1. Start by choosing your favorite succulents to decorate with. The best choices for a wreath are those that will tolerate a little bit of being jostled around and will recover more quickly to give you a fabulous final look sooner. Our favorites are Aeonium, Echeveria, Kalanchoe, Sedum, or Jade plants, which have the benefit of being tougher but are also some of our most popular and stylish looks.
2. If you’re working from a wire wreath form, fill it with sphagnum moss and wrap with wire or twine to keep everything in place. Then, soak your wreath in a sink or bathtub to hydrate the moss to get it ready for your succulents.
3. Lay out your succulents before you start so you can get an idea for the final look you’re working towards.
4. Using a small dowel or chopsticks, poke holes in the moss wreath to make spaces to plant your succulents. Gently remove your succulents from their containers, and work their roots into the form. To help secure your succulents and make your wreath display-ready sooner, you can use greening pins to clip your plants in place easily.

Once your Christmas wreath is ready to display, it will only need occasional watering by soaking. You can keep your wreath plain to highlight the best of your plants, or maybe dress it up with fashionable ribbons and decorations for an added touch of holiday spirit.

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Air Plant Globes and Ornaments

Nothing suits the uniquely soilless style of air plants like displaying them in a clear glass terrarium where they capture the eye and imagination. We’ve been captivated by the delicate stylings of glass Christmas ornaments since they first became a luxury for the holiday season. The whimsical colors and shapes of air plants are the perfect match for an ethereal glass Christmas display.

Choosing your favorite air plants to display at Christmas might be the most challenging part of this DIY decoration, as there are just so many stunning varieties to choose from. Older and larger air plants, especially the classic tillandsia, look fantastic in larger glass display terrariums with a snow-globe styled look. For a more dainty glass and air plant display, though, fill little glass orbs with smaller air plants for a living Christmas tree display.

Choose glass orbs of whatever size that have at least one air-exposed opening. While your air plants don’t need soil, they certainly need some air circulation in order to thrive. Consider pairing your air plants with decorative sand, mosses, rocks, crystals, ribbons or pine cones for a festive look that coordinates perfectly with the rest of your home.

Christmas may be wrapped up in layers of tradition and meaning these days, but it certainly originated as a celebration of life in the depths of the coldest and darkest days of winter. What better way to celebrate life during the winter than bringing delicate and gorgeous plants into our decorations themselves?! Succulents and air plants are not only a stylish and trendy way to style our homes for Christmas, but they are also the perfect reminder of all of the lush green to come when the holiday decorations are taken down and the delicate dustings of silver and white snow fade away.